Assignments ADM 3396: Wes Nicol Business Plan Competition
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The top five student teams from the Business Model Competition go on to compete in the University of Ottawa's Wes Nicol Business Plan Competition.
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The top team may be eligible for the Wes Nicol Competition National Finals.
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| How to make a great Elevator Pitch: http://www.dramatispersonae.org/HowToMakeAGreatElevatorPitch.doc |
Elevator Pitch: Marking Grid |
| Online Registration: Business Model Competition and Wes Nicol Business Plan Competition |
Wes Nicol Comp: Marking Grid |
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Student Preparation: READ THIS!
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Wes Nicol Comp: General Description and Criteria |
| Judges 2010: Sergio Pellizzari, Nakina Systems; Manu Sharma, OCRI; Scott Devries, Devries Financial |
Manu Sharma is with OCRI as the Manager of Entrepreneurship Development & Innovation Support, a role in which he develops, manages, facilitates and supports Youth Entrepreneurship programs in the Ottawa-Hull area. Manu is the founder and manager of TalentBridge, the flagship youth entrepreneurship and talent development program in OCRI.
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Scott Devries is Founder and President of Devries Financial Group. Incorporated in 1997, Devries Financial Group is an independent wealth management firm specializing in creative tax, estate and wealth management solutions for professionals, owner manager businesses and high net worth individuals. Scott graduated Bishop's University in 1984 with a B.A. in Finance. Scott is also Co-Founder and CEO of FRONTEX Reporting Systems Inc. FRONTEX is a leading provider of analysis and portfolio reporting applications that enables mutual fund dealers and financial advisors to transform raw tabular financial data into compelling and rich information that drives risk-adjusted, performance-based portfolio analysis, review and action. What makes FRONTEX unique is their ability to increase advisor efficiency and effectiveness, while significantly reducing costs to the organization.
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As a Solutions Architect at Nakina Systems, Sergio has responsibility for the company's future product roadmap by working closely with Nakina customers to understand their needs and how Nakina Systems' expertise can solve their operational issues. Sergio spent 18 years working at Bell Northern Research and Nortel Networks and was involved in the infancy of Nortel's highly successful line of HiCap and Metro Optical products. Sergio led design and architectural teams delivering management solutions for all Optical products and was involved in unifying management solutions of newly acquired products or those affiliated through joint-ventures. Sergio is one of Nakina's founders and key speakers. He has presented several joint papers with Nakina customers at many Telecom Indudustry Events and forums.
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Some previous examples:
2010:
Empire Fence and Deck (1st Place): Business Plan (PDF) (Word Doc) Business Model Bio Elevator Pitch Movie Branchise Model
BadServer.ca (2nd Place): Business Plan
Alpha List (3rd Place):
L3monaid (Honourable Mention): Business Plan Slides
Display Now (Honourable Mention): Business Plan
Place Records (Honourable Mention): Business Plan
Suggr (Honourable Mention):
2009 and earlier:
1. MyPinBoard.ca (http://dramatispersonae.org/BusinessModelCompetition/BusinessModelForMypinboard.doc and http://dramatispersonae.org/BusinessModelCompetition/mypinboard_valueproposition.xls),
2. Gaming Flicks, (Mike Stewart, Osh Mendis and Matt Karam) an online forum where gamers may share tricks, videos, and information. Users post information or videos, and other users rate how useful this information is, flicking it to the top or bottom of the page. (Business Plan, Financials, Slide Presentation, Sample Video.)
3. Image Search, (Kris Woodbeck) a software application that allows searching by image, and grouping like images (Incogna.com).
4. Online Sales Force, (Andrei Z., Adam Moede, Celine Tacniere, Kristaps Kuplais) is a website that allows companies to attract the public to sell their products/inventory online. Individuals sign up to become the selling force and earn a commission from the sales. The companies would earn money from the sales. The website would allow anyone to earn extra income.
5. Boite a Pizza, (Niroshan Rajakone) which introduces advertising capabilities to the inside of the pizza box. Because the boxes are being sold at a cheaper price than the market, the profit made will be double as compared to a usual pizza box retailer. Selling this concept to advertisers and marketing companies greatly increases the profit of this project. (Power Point, Plan D'Affaire, Modele Enterprise, Value Proposition, Spreadsheet.)
6. Ready Rice (David Dao and Billy Santoso) is a food chain which will begin operations in Vietnam selling rice pasta dishes as a street vendor. It will provide a special kind of rice pasta to sell to individuals as a ready made meal.
7. Connections Accounting, (Steve Mitchell, Geoffrey Scoates, Dan Racicot and Mary Ellen Matsui) is a human resource company that connects small businesses with accountants and bookkeepers. It provides the small businesses with professional work at a lower cost than our competitors; while, giving the accountants access steady work and higher pay. Our business will be focused in Ottawa to start, but easily expandable in the future.
8. Innumerous (Jasmine Campbell, Jasmine Sultan, Andrew Colautti and Di Kou) is a website with natural language question and answer capabilities.
9. Vinyl Tees (Draugh.com). Industrial Condos.
| 2009 Wes Nicol Business Plan Competition |
Green Generator- First Place
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PuckNation.ca- Second Place
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Your Friendly Chef- Third Place |
Sophistify- Honourable Mention
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SETA Rewards- Honourable Mention
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NICOL BUSINESS PLAN COMPETITION: MORE DETAILS
Awards are $5,000 for first place, $2,000 for second place and $1,000 for third place. The winner is eligible to compete against more than 15 other Canadian University teams in the national finals held each year in Ottawa, Canada at the Fairmont Chateau Laurier.
Students are encouraged to submit their business models to the UOttawa SOM Business Model Competition which will serve as an entry into the Wesley Nicol Competition as well. Students are also encouraged to participate in the Elevator Pitch competition hosted by the UOttawa Entrepreneur's Club.
The ultimate goal is to have twenty-four leading universities in Canada that participate in the Competition.
The objective of the Wes Nicol Entrepreneurial Competition is to encourage and stimulate new venture creation in Canada. Consequently, the competition is particularly interested in the submission of plans that have the potential of becoming a commercial reality. Only plans that are in their initial version are eligible for the Wes Nicol Award. There are many other competitions available to the more polished presentations by students experienced in the world of business-plan competitions. While students with experience in this world are welcome, venture-creation plans that have been rehearsed at previous competitions are not.
Here is what you need to do for the Competition:
An electronic copy of the business plan - best is a PDF file.
An electronic copy of the presentation - best is a PPT file
A copy of a video of the winning team making their presentation - best is a DVD.
You will upload these files to the competition website.
You need to provide the name and contact information for the leader of the winning team, in case they have to get hold of them in a hurry.
Business Plan Specifications
Business plans must be the original work of the submitting team. It need not be based on an existing business. It will likely be for a new venture. The business plan must be double-spaced, including appendices. The business plans will be considered for originality, viability and completeness.
Best efforts will be made to keep plans confidential; they will remain the intellectual property of the submitting teams.
Plans will be judged on the basis of originality, viability and completeness as well as presentation.
There is no one business plan outline that will be used as the "official one" for the competition. Keep in mind what the business plan is trying to do: to explain to someone who you want to commit to your business opportunity - what the opportunity is, and why it will succeed. Plans should include, however, the following elements:
Summary for Investors or for other stakeholders such as bankers, employers, suppliers, future clients, etc.
Product/Service Offering and Value Proposition
Your Business Model
Market Analysis/Marketing Plan/Guerrilla Marketing and Social Marketing
Company and the Industry
Management Team
Operations Plan
Risks Associated with the Venture including Competitive Analysis
Financial Plan
Summary for Investors and Other Stakeholders
The Summary is difficult to write well. Allow some time at the end of writing your business plan to polish this summary.
The Summary should be a maximum of two pages, double spaced.
The objective of the summary is threefold: 1) to summarize the business opportunity and your plan for exploiting it, 2) to impress the reader as to the attractiveness of your opportunity, and 3) to convince the reader to proceed with reading the plan itself.
Outline what you want from investors or other stakeholders (e.g., you are looking for an equity investment of $1.5M). Note, if you are planning on Angel investing or VC investing, then you should not price the equity that you may be offering to investors. For example, do not say something like "we are prepared to give up 30% of the equity in the new venture for $1.5M." Negotiations over price take place after the presentation of a business plan.
Be sure to emphasize those points that you want the reader to remember about your plan once a couple of weeks have passed.
There are many sources for information on these summaries for business plans - here is one: http://www.inc.com/articles/2000/10/14875.html. The author there argues that "the summary is the business plan in miniature. The summary should stand alone, almost as a kind of business plan within the business plan. It should be logical, clear, interesting -- and exciting. A reader should be able to read through it in four or five minutes and understand what makes your business tick. After reading your summary, a reader should be prompted to say, 'So that's what those people are up to.'"
Product/Service Offering
Describe the product/service that you will offer in more detail.
Specify the value of your product/service to your customers, and how it will help them offer greater value to their customers. This is critical. Provide evidence of this potential value creation for customers to the extent that you can - testimonials from customers, customer survey results, initial orders, etc.
Market Analysis/Marketing Plan
Specify the reachable market for your product/service.
Segment this market and select a target segment. Outline why you have selected this target market. Remember that your target segment should be large enough and growing quickly enough to be a base for success, but also not so large nor growing so quickly that you cannot become a dominant supplier and subsequently protect this position.
Outline how you plan to enter the target market - lead customers (including individual contacts if available), initial pricing strategy, level of customization, advertising and promotion, etc.
Show how you can reduce the 1 to many marketing problem to a one to a few marketing challenge.
Company and the Industry
Describe the company that you plan to create - how large, what competencies, what structure. Remember to focus on your core competency and outsource everything else.
Place your company in its industry context. You might use the kind of factors that Porter uses in his "5-force model" to do this. Do not mention "5 forces" in your plan, however, or slavishly adhere to "5 forces" analysis - it will seem really amateur.
Management Team
The founding team - their experience and strengths, and how they compliment each other's strengths.
Founding team roles and how they will work together.
Founding team weaknesses and how these weaknesses will be addressed through hiring key managers.
Plans for hiring key managers - locating them, timing of hiring, compensation packages, etc.
If the management team is strong, then put this section earlier in the plan. "There are five important aspects of a new venture opportunity: management, management, management, market and product."
Operations Plan
Implementation schedule.
Resource acquisition plan - including personnel to be hired, partnerships, supplier and distributor relationships, manufacturing and outsourcing plans.
Key contacts with a bank manager, accountant and lawyer.
Try to find a mentor that really understands how to run a business.
Risks Associated with the Venture
Outline the important risks that the new venture faces - potentially damaging events, key assumptions about technology, markets and competition.
Plans for addressing these important risks - what will you do if ...
Please don't say that there is no competition. This is not really believable. If you have a good idea, you will have competition. If it is a bad idea, you won't, but so what, it is a bad idea.
Financial Plan
At a minimum, plans must include cash flow projections for 3 years (yearly for all years).
Also useful would be:
- income statements for years 1 through 3
- balance sheets for the start of year 1 and the end of years 1 through 3
Carry out sensitivity analysis on your financial projections and show that you understand the key drivers for financial success (e.g., timing of critical events like product introduction, sales targets, gross margins, input costs). A sensitivity analysis based on break-even analysis may be useful.
Plans for financing start-up and growth.
Source: http://www.business.carleton.ca/nicol_competition/plan_specs.html
Resources
There is a wide variety of Web sites and books available to assist the writing of a business plan. There is no one source that will be used as the "official one" for the competition. All business plans submitted must follow the business plan specification outline to qualify. Beyond that, you must keep in mind what the business plan is trying to do: to explain to someone who you want to commit to your business opportunity - what the opportunity is, and why it will succeed. The following Web sites may be helpful:
Writing an Effective Business Plan, OCRI Entrepreneurship Centre
Business Plan Guide, Business Service Centre, Government of Ontario
Write a Business Plan, US Small Business Administration
There is also a "dummies" book that is very good. It is written for business beginners: Tiffany, Paul and Steven D. Peterson (1997) Business Plans for Dummies, IDG Books.
A good Canadian book for starting a small business that includes a business plan guide is: Walter C. Good (2003) Building a Dream: A Canadian Guide to Starting Your Own Business, 5/e, McGraw-Hill.
A couple of sample business plans are available:
RegisterMe.com Business Plan (pdf), by Julie Budd and Scott Seaby. This plan, written by two undergraduates, won the 2002 Wesley Nicol Business Plan Competition.
Limited Radius Manufacturing Business Plan, written by an exec MBA student (pdf)
Source: http://www.business.carleton.ca/nicol_competition/resources.html
Confidentiality and Protecting your Ideas
As described in the competition guidelines, teams must submit proposals representing original work. If for any reason, the competition organizers believe that this rule is violated, entrants may be disqualified from the challenge. The responsibility of submitting original work rests completely with entering teams.
In respect of maintaining confidentiality of proposal submitted, the competition organizers, sponsors and judges will verbally agree to non-disclosure agreements. While every effort will be made to preserve confidentiality, it is ultimately the responsibility of the teams to protect the most sensitive aspects of their work.
The competition organizers, sponsors and judges recognize and agree that all teams retain their rights to any and all intellectual property described in submissions to the competition.
All volunteer supporters of the competition - competition organizers, sponsors and judges - verbally agree to the following non-disclosure agreement:
As a volunteer supporter of The Nicol Entrepreneurial Awards competition and associated events and activities, I am aware that I may have access to submitted business plans (collectively, "Submissions"). These Submissions may contain the ideas, inventions, and concepts (collectively "Ideas") of competition entrants. I understand that all intellectual and other property rights of all entrants will remain unaltered as a result of entering the competition and related activities. I further understand that some of these Ideas may constitute trade secrets and that entrants may not have taken the necessary steps to patent, copyright, or otherwise protect their Submissions and Ideas.
In consideration of my participation in the competition and associated activities, I agree that only I will review the Submissions and I will take all reasonable steps to hold the Submissions and Ideas which I may receive in the course of the competition in strict confidence and will not copy, reveal or disclose such Submissions and Ideas to others. I further agree not to use any Submissions and Ideas for my own benefit or the benefit of any organization with which I am affiliated.
The above restrictions shall not apply to any Submissions and Ideas which are in the public domain at the time of disclosure or become publicly available through no wrongful act of mine, is known to me at the time of disclosure or is independently developed by me, is used or disclosed with the approval of the entrants involved, is furnished to a third party without similar restrictions on the third party's rights, is received by me from a third party who has a lawful right to disclose it to me, or is disclosed pursuant to the requirement or request of a governmental organization.
The above restriction will apply during the time of the competition and for a period of six (6) months after the winner of the competition is publicly announced.
Waivers and Release
Entrants are further recommended to read the following waiver and release clause in connection with all individuals volunteering to support and implement The Nicol Entrepreneurial Awards competition.
Each entrant understands that the each of the participating sponsors, mentors, speakers, judges and any other individual or organization supporting The Nicol Entrepreneurial Awards competition are volunteers and are under no obligation to render any advice or service to any team. Each entrant also understands and agrees that in spite of the steps taken by competition organizers to protect the confidentiality of submissions, the legal protection of the business plans submitted by teams to the competition is otherwise the sole responsibility of the entrants.
In consideration of the time, expertise and other resources provided by the above-noted individuals, each entrant hereby voluntarily releases each said individual from any further liabilities, responsibilities, and accountabilities relating to or arising out of his/her participation in The Nicol Entrepreneurial Awards competition.
Source: http://www.business.carleton.ca/nicol_competition/confidentiality.html
Guidelines
Business plans must be the original work of the submitting team. It need not be based on an existing business. The business plan must be double-spaced, including appendices. The business plans will be considered for originality, viability and completeness.
All plans will be kept confidential and remain the intellectual property of the submitting teams.
Teams must submit one printed copy of the business plan and an electronic PDF copy. Plus they must have a DVD or CD ROM video of their presentation.
Cover Sheets must be completed and returned with each entry to be eligible! An individual cover sheet must be completed by each team member. Team member names must be on the cover sheets only, and not on the cover page of the plan itself.
Source: http://www.business.carleton.ca/nicol_competition/guidelines.html
(Our class will support entries into the Faculty of Engineering's Entrepreneurship and Innovation Endowment Fund Business Plan Competition to win prizes of $10,000, $7,500 and $5,000! (Expressions of interest are due by the third week of January))
Business Model Competition
Entrepreneurialist Culture Front Page
DramatisPersonae.org
Exploriem.org
